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When I give seminars to school age children on solar cooking I usually see a student with a clear bottle of water and I ask them, "did you have to get that water out of a river running behind your house? Did you have to dig a hole in your yard to find that water?" They laugh. Millions around the world have to get their drinking water every day that way.

Safer Water With Solar

When I give seminars to school age children on
solar cooking I usually see a student with a clear bottle of water and I ask
them, "did you have to get that water out of a river running behind your
house? Did you have to dig a hole in your yard to find that water?" They
laugh. Millions around the world have to get their drinking water every day that
way.

As NASA looks for signs of water on Mars, people on planet
earth are polluting fresh water sources at an alarming rate. Disease is rampant
in third world countries because of polluted drinking water. Half of the world's
population has little or no sanitation systems to prevent contaminated drinking
water and they lack any means to purify their water.

Recently on national television Bill Gates stated that 10
million children die every year due to contaminated drinking water. His
foundation "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation" is spearheading
world efforts to provide medicine to these children in order to prevent their
deaths. The diseases transmitted through water affects countless adults as well.

Those of us with clean drinking water plumbed into our homes
are a minority in the world scene. Most of us don't consider that our
inexhaustible supply of clean water can be halted immediately if there is a
natural disaster or if terrorists should happen to sabotage our water sources.

Simple inexpensive devices can utilize the Sun to pasteurize
polluted drinking water in third world countries, thereby helping to eliminate
rampant disease. These same devices can help us pasteurize water when camping or
during emergencies. More sophisticated devices that utilize the power of the sun
can provide clean distilled drinking water from any water source if our water
utility is interrupted.

What is in the water?

While doing research for this article I soon realized that the
topic of water was too large to review in a few paragraphs. It is hoped that you
will continue your own research about the many pollutants that find its way into
our drinking water.

Germs: Microbes exist in our drinking water but usually
are not harmful. Other disease-producing bacteria, viruses and protozoan cysts,
that are also found in water, are harmful. Utility water companies add Chlorine
and chloramine as a treatment to kill germs. Protozoan cysts (cryptosporidium
and Giardia) are hard to kill with disinfectant chemicals, so they have to be
filtered. Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a coliform bacteria that can cause
food-borne and waterborne outbreaks of disease with loss of life primarily among
senior citizens and young children.

Boiling water rids the water of germs but can concentrate
nitrates and pesticides in the water. Not all commercially available filters
will filter out cryptosporidium and giardia.

Chemicals: Many chemicals that occur in nature can be
harmful to your health (arsenic, radium, radon, selenium). Utilities test for 78
chemicals as regulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA
regulates 90 different contaminants, with 60 additional contaminants being
studied. Many are caused by human activity: Dangerous organic chemicals are
found in gasoline, cleaning fluid, pesticides, paint thinners and radiator
fluid.

Rainwater seeps through hazardous waste dumps polluting
groundwater. Pesticides, heavy metals, and dangerous chemicals are washed into
water sources from many man-made sources (farms, lawns, golf courses, de-icing
roads, industrial plants, neighborhood streets, etc.). A visit to any city dump
will scare the begeezus out of you. Look for a sump or low spot where run-off
collects. Not pretty. That stuff is getting into the ground water!

As mentioned above, utility companies add chemicals to our
water for disinfection purposes, mostly Chlorine and Chloramine. Many water
utilities add the debated chemical Flouride to drinking water. Lead that leaches
into water running through old pipes has proven to be harmful to people.

With all this talk about germs and chemicals, we haven't even
touched on other aspects of drinking water like dissolved solids that find their
way into our water, and important factors like taste, odor and clarity.

Federal laws limit the amount of germs and chemicals that are
allowed to pass through the water system, but it is acknowledged that we do get
small quantities of these pollutants through our normal water delivery. Water
utility companies do a great job treating our water so it is relatively safe,
but it is advised that you develop a rapport with your local water district to
find out more about your own local situation.

Flood of '72

When I was in Upstate New York in 1972 I witnessed the
terrible flood that ravaged many areas as a result of Hurricane Estes. Entire
communities were devastated. The flood waters carried every known bacteria and
chemical from garages, shops, septic systems, sewer plants, stores and
factories. It contaminated everything it touched. All food supplies, including
can goods, had to be piled high in front of grocery stores so that front end
loaders could scoop them into large dump trucks headed for the county dump. All
power, sewer, phone and drinking water utilities were down. A distant brewery
that was not affected by the flood waters stopped production of beer and started
bottling water (in beer bottles) to keep people alive during the aftermath.

It is said that each person needs a minimum of a ½ gallon of
water a day to sustain life. One gallon in desert regions. Three days without
water and life is threatened.

Water Storage

Many families have opted to store water for emergencies. The
amounts stored and the containers vary. We have an advantage over the folks of
1972. We now have a wide variety of bottled water we can purchase at the store.
No matter what we store, it may not be enough and we may have to resort to other
means of obtaining drinking water. Natural or man-made disasters (even local
emergencies) can be very stressful, with diseases being easily transmitted. We
don't need to add to the stress by consuming contaminated water.

In an emergency we've heard that we can tap other common
sources of water like our water heater, toilet tank, water bed, pools, etc.
These may be sources, but don't count on them. They may be damaged in an
earthquake or contaminated. Water beds are a very bad source of drinking water
as they contain harmful toxic chemicals designed to keep out algae. Swimming
pool water, unless distilled of all chemicals, will probably make you sick.

You've probably read information in survival books that
describe various contraptions like digging a hole in the ground and covering it
with plastic to collect water. This information is interesting, but you must
exercise caution as building them may use up more water in your body than they
produce. Also, they may not produce enough water to sustain life. Storage is
more practical, especially in desert communities.

If one must resort to using what ever water is available,
there are ways of making that water more drinkable.

Chemical Additives

As a Boy or Girl Scout, you have probably tried the nasty
tasting iodine tablets available in camping sections of the store. These are to
be used to sustain life when no other source of fresh water is available, and
then in only small quantities. Chlorine and hydrogen peroxide and other
chemicals can be used, but you have to know how to use them. A safer product,
not readily available in everyday stores, is Ion (or similar product) that is a
non-toxic, stabilized oxygen liquid that is added to stored water and reportedly
kills pathogenic bacteria.

Filters

Filters that
come in a wide variety are helpful while hiking, camping or in emergency
situations. Y2k helped us learn about many different types, and many of us have
these filters in our "72 hour kits" or "mobility bags" as
recommended by FEMA and The American Red Cross. There are many to pick from;
hand pumps, gravity fed filters and "under pressure" designs. You
would need a 12 volt pump and batteries to operate the pressure kind if utility
water pressure was not available. Most campers regard the Katadyn brand as the
best for small hand pump units, while the larger AquaRain (and new Katadyn unit)
gravity filters are said to filter out most harmful bacteria. The type you buy
in the store to add to your kitchen faucet or drip in a container in the
refrigerator takes away taste and odor, but does little to filter out harmful
bacteria, heavy metals and chemicals.

How the Sun can help

Solar cookers of all types will safely pasteurize water of all
harmful bacteria. Thousands are in use in third world countries to help
eliminate rampant disease. Millions more are needed in poorer areas of the
world.

Through the ages we have been told that we need to boil water
for five or ten minutes to make questionable water safe to drink. This is OK if
you have the fuel. Millions of families in the third world do not have enough fuel,
and in an emergency you may not either.

By heating water the "slow method" in a solar
cooking device (home-made or commercial unit) you accomplish the same thing as
boiling, only it takes longer. A simple inexpensive device called a Water
Purification Indicator (WAPI) can be used to see when the water is safe to
drink. When a small amount of soy wax is melted in the small plastic tube, the
water has reached 160 F and the water is safe to drink. You can learn more about
the WAPI at the Solar Cooking Archive
web site operated by Solar Cookers International

When I give seminars to school age children on solar cooking I
usually see a student with a clear bottle of water and I ask them, "did you
have to get that water out of a river running behind your house? Did you have to
dig a hole in your yard to find that water?" They laugh. Millions around
the world have to get their drinking water every day that way.

While pasteurizing will solve a lot of disease problems, it
does not address other things found in the water such as chemicals, pesticides
and heavy metals. These need to be eradicated by distillation, and there is an
effective way of using the sun to distill water from any water source.

During
Horace McCracken's life, he became renown throughout the world as "the
solar water distilling expert". He spent decades perfecting a device that
would use sunlight as a power source for making clean drinking water. Most other
devices that have been invented in the last thirty years have been patterned
after principles that McCracken brought to light. One of his units has been in
use for over twenty years on the coast of Baja where potable water is not
readily available. Salt water from the ocean is daily poured into the distiller,
and by the end of the day up to three gallons of clear, clean, sweet tasting
drinking water is produced using no other power source, except the sun.

Solar distillers can be home-made, but could be difficult
because we would probably use the wrong materials for construction. Little
information is available about "how to do it" because Mr. McCracken
passed away before he could publish his exhaustive research. Commercial units
are available. Popular ones include McCrackens, "SunWater" line, and
another up and coming product made by Sol Aqua. Many large solar distilling
systems are in operation in sunny climates throughout the world.

There are pros and cons about using distilled water for
drinking water, but the fact remains that distilled water gets out all of the
impurities that is found in almost all water sources. This includes all germs,
viruses, chemicals, organic chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, diluted
minerals, and taste and odor causing contaminates.

Deep water wells usually produce germ free water, but should
be tested yearly. Most wells require large 220 VAC pumps, but these can be
converted to a reliable solar system thus eliminating the need for grid power
and back-up generators.

These effective devices can be used for every day use, and in
emergencies as well. They certainly will be more important as the world finds
its water supply getting more and more polluted with a myriad of contaminates
found to be dangerous to people and animals.

This
is the fourth in a series of six articles concerning solar power and emergency
preparedness. Mr. Little has sold solar energy products for 20 years. He is the
manager of Vegas Trailer Supply in Las Vegas Nevada, and conducts free solar
living and preparedness seminars at his store. He can be contacted by email at:
michael@vegastrailer.com. More information on using solar for emergency
preparedness, mitigation and recovery is available at:
http://solarprepared.com. You can also visit a blog about using Solar for
Emergencies at:
http://solarguy.blogspot.com

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